DAY 74. Sidney Rabinovitch

Entrepreneur and the founding partner of FOM.

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English:

Sidney is an entrepreneur and the founding partner of FOM, industry and trade of accessories for comfort and well being, with 9 years of existence, a company winner of 2 awards for entrepreneurship in 2008 and 2010 by Exame PME/Insper and PEGN/FGV. It is present in 51 shopping malls, with its own network and franchises, working in the corporate market, wholesale and electronic commerce. He has 15 years of experience in the Brazilian receptive tourism market, selling the “Brazil product” to Europe, to the United States and Latin America. Sidney started by the financial market, with a graduation in Business Administration.

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What is your impression about a brand called Brazil?

I believe that your project refers to something bigger, commercial, highly relevant, that has the ambition to persevere as few brands so far managed to continue or persist to keep trying…

To have and to see important Brazilian brands has always been (personally) a professional and a business goal for me, when I worked selling Brazil as a tourist destination at fairs and operators around the world and currently with the FOM project, which was born nine years ago to be exported and, by a twist of fate and time, ended up happening around here (we are now present in 51 shopping centers in the country).

Even more hilarious is the fact that people still come to me to know if I’m the representative of the brand FOM of Europe, Scandinavia, the United States in the country…

This could a reason to be proud of, but it is not…

Taking advantage of this still confusing moment, of the supposed end of the prevailing apathy and lethargy, plus the trailer for the World Cup and parodying the so abused Nelson Rodrigues.

I think that a new and contemporary brand “Brasil” and not “Brazil”, would have to be thought without the current clichés of warmth, sensuality, curves, green, blue, improvisation, joy, receptivity, in short, that says that the Brazilian is nice… and wild.

“The Brazilian is prepared to be ‘the greatest thing in the world’ in nothing. Being the greatest in the world in anything, even in spit in the distance, implies a serious, heavy and suffocating responsibility”.

If we look at the top ten economies in the world, and we are in seventh or eighth place, we realize that even those who are worst positioned have relevant old and new brands. If we take Korea of the 90s as an example, it gets to be scandalous the evolution of, at the least, three brands, which knocked down the most traditional and competent Japanese ones for years, these same brands that have gained market from Americans and Europeans in the 80s.

At that time it was common to hear that the Japanese people copied what the USA / Europe were doing…

And why don’t we have a global brand that everyone recognizes, especially now that we are among the best (by exclusion) economies?

Perhaps, because we are (Nelson again…) the opposite of narcissistic, we spit in our own image and we have no self-esteem.

Yesterday I read a poster of the manifestations saying that Brazil keeps improving itself and continues in a bad situation…

Well, very blablabla… and pessimism that is not helpful, much less to build a brand.

We have opened an important window that will value a lot the “made in anywhere except China and branches”.

I believe in a smooth brand, with design, comfort, ergonomics; it has to be a product, like clothes, furniture, accessory; it may be a discreet delight, but with color.

Not the basic, or technology, start-up or service, we are very outdated to compete.

Directed by entrepreneurs, not by public or mixed company like Petro and Embraer, with Brazilian and foreign teams that have had the best educations (high self-esteem) and experiences, they realize that in spite of everything, this is still a good option to “make it in America”.